Final Fantasy VII heavily references the Lurian Kabbalah [kah-ball-a]. Kabbalah is a Jewish school of thought that also refers to the mysticism of Judaism and Gnosticism, a collection of ancient religions. Not only does FFVII draw from the beliefs of these religions, but it incorporates what actually happened to the followers in real life, as well as using Hebrew in the formation of character names. A few examples are:

• The Gnostics were persecuted, like the Cetra.
• Sephiroth's name comes from the term Sefirot (meaning "counting" or "enumeration"), which refers to the ten aspects of God in the Tree of Life.
• The sixth sefira in Tree of Life is beauty, known in Hebrew as Tif'eret {ti-fah-ret}. It is possible that this is how Tifa's name was derived.

During the Motorcycle Chase FMV, Midgar is incorrectly spelled Midgal on the side of the truck door. This is probably because the letters "R" and "L" are commonly mistranslated from Japanese to English.

One of the advertisements for the game reads "Someone please get the guys who make cartridge games a cigarette and a blindfold." and "Good thing, if it were available on cartridge, it'd retail for around $1,200." This was a jab at Nintendo and their cartridge-based platform the Nintendo 64.

In an interview, Tetsuya Nomura stated that he envisioned Cloud and Sephiroth's relationship to be like that of Musashi Miyamoto and Sasaki Kojiro. This influenced not only their appearances, but also the appearances of their swords.

"For me, it’s of course Cloud and Sephiroth. My concept for Sephiroth from the beginning was that everything about him would be kakkoii. His battle movements, and all his in-game scenes too. My image of the relationship between Cloud AND Sephiroth was that of Musashi Miyamoto and Sasaki Kojiro, and I had them in mind when I designed their appearance, as well as their swords. Of course Cloud is Musashi, and Sephiroth is Kojiro."

In the early development stages, producer Tetsuya Nomura planned to have only three playable characters in the entire game. However, during a phone call with Yoshinori Kitase, they decided that one of the three characters should be permanently killed off. After the staff chose Aerith, Nomura created Tifa as another possible love interest for Cloud.

If you encounter the enemy Adamantaimai and manage to cast Barrier, MBarrier or Big Guard (which includes both statuses) before its first turn, the Adamantaimai will attempt to use Cure. However, it does not have Cure in its attack list, which will most commonly result in a debug error message appearing advising players to hold L1, R1 and Select to return to the overworld. The reason Adamantaimai tries to use Cure is because Cure has the ability ID of 0. Adamantaimai selects an ability to use if it lacks Barrier status, and it can select another ability if it has Barrier but not MBarrier (at no other time does this enemy store an ability in memory). However, no value was ever set for the possibility of it already having both statuses on its first turn, so it never sets an ability and instead tries to use the ability set at 0. While Adamantaimai using Cure is not unusual on paper, it has no animation for it unlike its other attacks, resulting in the error message. Attempting this glitch in modern releases of the game will cause it to freeze.

After you find Cloud in the hospital after he falls in the Lifestream, he will mumble incoherent things when you speak to him. One of the things he mumbles is "zeno... gias..." This is a translation error and a reference to the game Xenogears. In the PC port of Final Fantasy VII, the spelling is corrected to "Xeno... gears".

Cloud also says "A billion mirror fragments.... small.... light..." which is a reference to the vocal song of Xenogears, Small Two of Pieces. One of the lines to the song is "Broken mirror, a million shades of light".

The inscription on Jenova's helmet is a reference to the real world, and read:
Made in Hong Kong
All rights reserved 1996
Squer Company Limited

It wasn't until 2005 (When a high-res image emerged) that this was found, 8 years after the game was released.

There are large quantities of cut content from the soapland 'Honey Bee Inn'. The content is as follows:

Whilst in the club, Cloud could end up in a bathtub with nine muscular men, peep through keyholes of occupied rooms, have makeup applied, and choose a room to stay in. You could have also encountered Palmer, head of the Shinra company's space program, coming from one of his regular "bath sessions". There was also a waiting room and employee's louge which players could visit and interact with NPCs.

Whilst some of this content was ultimately cut from the game, the unfinished content can be found on the discs of the original Japanese release and can be accessed through file hacks.

Cloud's hair was originally supposed to be black and slicked back to contrast with Sephiroth's long white hair. The developers also thought it would be a good way to render less polygons on screen. The idea was eventually ditched for his iconic spiky hair. The idea was later used for Angeal, the original wielder of the Buster Sword and Sephiroph's close friend in Crisis Core.

Many people still don't know how Cloud's legendary "Buster Sword" sticks to his back, but if you look at his initial design, it shows there is a magnet held by his pant straps that keeps his sword in place.

During development, series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi's mother passed away. At the time, Sakaguchi wanted to craft a story that would show just because somebody has passed on, it doesn't mean that they are forever lost. He also wanted to present a realistic death, rather than a Hollywood sacrificial end. These two desires resulted in the concept of the Lifestream and Aeris' iconic death. The characters continuing to go on, attempting to save the world, after Aeris' death is a reflection of his own feelings coping with his mother's tragic death.

During the scene where Sister Ray is about to fire the Diamond Weapon, there is a voice that comes through the intercom. The voice actor is not credited in the credits, and the person who spoke through it is unknown.

Although a voice was heard, and ultimately makes Final Fantasy VII the first Final Fantasy game with a voice actor.

While at the Honeybee Inn, if you look into one of the occupied rooms through a key-hole, you can see a mini Cait Sith inside a bath tub jumping around.

Both Ruby and Emerald WEAPON were not in the original Japanese version of the game. They were added later for the international versions of the game.

Aeris, after being brought back via a cheat device, has dialogue in discs 2 and 3. This seems to imply that either Spoiler:she was not meant to die at the end of disc 1 or that Spoiler:she was intended to be revived later in the game.

During the cutscene Spoiler:in which he kills Aeris, Sephiroth's hands are bare as he descends from the ceiling. However, during the rest of the scene, he has black gloves on.

When returning to the Sector 5 Church, two different images of Aeris may be seen. One appears for a split second in the center of screen before disappearing, while in the other Aeris is seen tending the flowers before Cloud moves closer. It has been speculated this is meant to be her "ghost".

The character Zack Fair was created late into development. He was made up along the way as Kazushige Nojima was building up the mysteries surrounding Cloud (most importantly, who he was and who he based his fake cocky personality on). Before Zack was created, Aerith was to see her first love in Cloud, though who that person would be was not yet decided until later, but there were plans to make this person Sephiroth. Eventually, Zack was placed to serve as both Aerith's first love and to solve the mysteries surrounding Cloud. When he was finally developed, Nojima asked the staff in charge of the event scenes to add foreshadowing to Cloud's true persona and to Zack himself. Zack was also the last character to be drawn by Tetsuya Nomura.

In the 2012 PC re-release, using a Save Crystal in a specific screen of the Northern Cave will display the area name in the menu and save file as "Secret Cow Level". This is a reference to the Secret Cow Level in Diablo II.